posted 26th October 2023
Many of us in the agility space will collaborate with teams, departments, and whole companies to help them make the work visible. The first general practice of the Kanban Method is to visualise the work. We know that there is value in this as once the work is visible, we can start to understand it better. Once visualised we can then align as a group so we can start to build a strategy and decide how we are going to deal with it.
With all that said, so many folks will just think, "Well let's get Jira (other workflow tools are available) up and start populating the heck out of it" but there are so many other approaches and tools we can leverage that can help us visualise our work. More so, depending on your situation the choice you make may be better suited to another way completely. To elaborate on this and explore the subject of visualisation, let's jump in!
We often want to visualise a workflow, especially in knowledge work. Once we have this visualised, we can then start to add meat to the workflow as to build a full kanban system (spoiler alert! There is more to Kanban than a Kanban Board but that is a conversation for another day). Once we have that flow visualised, we can then start to actively manage the work in the system and make choices as to how we may look to evolve and improve the flow of work in our system. Tools for this are a plenty, we have already mentioned Jira but there are others to such as Trello, Kanbanize, Azure, LeanKit and many more! These are great and can give you an excellent view but there are so many other ways to visualise our work.
Another we hear a lot of is the Product Road Map. This one I both love and fear. A good Road Map (like Eddie Green said about a good man) is hard to find as a lot of the time we just end up creating a Gantt Chart (which is another way to make work visible in itself) but we often want a road map to show us the evolution of our offering and where we maybe going. If we can build it with outcomes then great, but when it turns into a deterministic plan with fixed dates, that is where the fear comes from so beware on this front. When it comes to most things product you cannot go wrong with a bit of guidance from Roman Pichler so do consider these guidelines and maybe read a bit more from Roman before the get go: click here
If we want to understand how a product or service offering hangs together, we may want to leverage a Wardley Map. This is a great tool for gaining agreement on a product or service as well as being a fantastic conversation starter for the evolution of the product/service and exploring product/service strategy. Now I will say, it takes some getting used to but once you have become comfortable with the skill it is a great tool to leverage and I would seriously encourage anyone in a leadership role in regard to a product or service to become familiar with this tool as it is a great one to add to your tool box. If you are keen to learn more on this check this site out: click here
Another wonderful way to visualise work is by leveraging Impact Mapping. This is a superb way to decide on who you want to target and what will the behaviour change be that you are targeting. Again, it will take a bit of time to get comfortable with but again, it is another excellent tool to bring about agreement and alignment on prioritisation and to keep the focus on the most important demographic now as well as who we may target later.
One of my favourite tools to use when looking to get everyone's opinion out and shared when building a product is User Story Mapping. This approach, which Jeff Patton wrote so well about is phenomenal in uncovering the bits you all thought you understood well......... until well, you did not. It is such a terrific way to get everyone's thoughts out of their head and it is normally one person who points out that little gem that turns the game on its head. User Story Mapping is such a powerful tool that if given the right amount of investment can guide value slicing and releases with ease not just the flow of the user journey. If you want to explore more on User Story Mapping here is a superb book to get into: click here
Another great skill I see, when leveraged well is an absolute game changer and that is Bikablo. Now I know a number of you may start jumping on the spot shouting "but Bikablo is not the only way to make things visual" and I totally agree. However, what Bikablo does give is a basic visual dictionary that anyone can leverage and no matter the level of artist, everyone can use it. From bringing product visions to life, to jazzing up retrospectives, making team charters stay visible, to representing a team metaphor; Bikablo is a great skill in upping the work visualisation stakes. It really is true that a picture paints a thousand words, and this skill is one I would highly recommend investing in, plus it is fabulous fun! If you would like to explore Bikablo the reach out to Marcus De Vale at WorkVisible Studios: click here
Finally, one set of visualisations that I don't see used quite enough is the visualisations our systems (especially the automated systems) can produce for us from our system data. By this I mean making the Cumulative Flow Diagram visible to all. The Lead Time Distribution chart easily shared and understood. The System Lead Time Scatter Plot for us to see so we can inspect our outliers and realise if we re meeting our SLE's. Most automated systems (Jira, ADO, Kanbanize, etc.) will create these in a basic way for you. However, you can also leverage tools that sit on top of these systems to give you real in-depth insights you can use from these visuals and create others such as Monte Carlo Simulations to discuss when considering probability in delivery and acceptable timelines. These insights can be gold. Enabling conversations at differing levels that can help bring about alignment and adjustments to strategic direction. These tools include (but not limited to) the likes of Nave, Actionable Agile, etc.
So what are we trying to do here? Well, when we visualise our work, we have a starting point for agreement and alignment. If we do not get it immediately, we have something to kick around that we did not have before. That is why it is such a key stage in evolving your business agility. Yes, we get that, but why are you banging on about it? The reason I am is that so often when I hear the term visualise the work, the Jira Haters and Jira Police raise their heads, roll their sleeves up and get set for pistols at dawn and that is not what visualising the work is about. To me, when we visualise the work, we bring clarity and understanding and if we only do that by leveraging one kind of tool we are missing so much.
We can bring so much clarity, and avoiding lots of waste if we can visualise where we are going, what we need to do when, for who, and know how we can measure that impact, to do that we need to use a bunch of different work visualisation skills. In summary, if you think leveraging a workflow tool is all you need to do to get the work visualised, you have hardly scratched the surface.
What tools and techniques have I missed that you like to leverage? What have you seen work well? What have you tried that sucked? Let me know, I would love to hear your thoughts on this subject.
Also, if you'd like to learn about how we utilise some of these techniques in the Kanban Method then do get in touch via the website.